Yo Yo Girl and 2:3
by Alex Foster
Summary: Sam never was very good at keeping promises and Freddie understood because their fairy tale was always going to end differently than others. Future fic. Sam/Freddie.
1. Yo Yo Girl

Title: Yo Yo Girl

Author: Alex Foster

Category: General

Word Count: 738

Warnings: Underage drinking

Rating: PG for implied adult themes

Summary: Sam never was very good at keeping promises. She figured she should feel bad about it, at least some of the bigger ones in life, but never did. Future fic.

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Dan Schneider. No money is being made and no infringement is intended.

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Resonance

n.

4. A relationship of mutual understanding or trust and agreement between people

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Sam never was very good at keeping promises. She wondered if maybe she should feel bad about it, at least some of the bigger promises in life, but never did.

Carls would feel bad. The same girl that had broken hearts intentionally and unintentionally of nearly every boy and some girls at Ridgeway and later NYU would never give her word and then vanish for weeks at a time. Would never pretend she wasn't sorry.

He shouldn't indulge her, maybe there was a part of her that expected him to stop, but Freddie kept right on being his stupid self. Sure they threw the H word back and forth, as always, but even after all this time it was still code and they still knew what it really meant.

Freddie told her he hated it when she showed up at his apartment, bags in hand, looking for a place to stay for a couple of days or a month. They argued and shouted but it never escaped Sam's notice that he always had a box of fat cakes and more bacon than his delicate system could possibly handle waiting in the kitchen whenever she showed up.

It was a familiar dance by now. He would offer the couch and she would announce she was taking the bed instead. Being that same stupid self he had the gentlemanliness to act surprised when told he was welcome to share it.

Sam made sure never to stay too long. In her head she counted the days but refused to compare her time at Freddie's to the length of some of her mom's longest relationships. By her reasoning it should be worth a few extra days since they never used the R word.

Carly wasn't like her, unsurprisingly. Carls needed those words, clung to them, and would probably pluck them from the air and keep them pressed in a scrapbook if she could. When the three of them were together, Sam knew she could count on Freddie to share eye rolls with her at Carly's latest boyfriend and the dovey chiz they coated themselves in.

She figured he did it more to make fun of Carly's boyfriend rather than at the concept in general, but Sam knew to take what she could get. After all she'd seen his rather extensive collection of chick lit and knew he had an inner weakness for dovey.

She remembered long ago lying on freshly cut grass, basking in a dull buzz, and listening to Freddie trying to explain something about orbits to her. How some planets and moons crossed paths with each other but they were off by just enough that instead of colliding they actually stabilized each other, yanking each back into the proper alignment. She couldn't remember what he called it exactly, resolving or resonant maybe, but there was something about the analogy she liked. She'd never ever tell him so, but it was kind of…pretty.

Eventually Freddie would start to plan things with her, to talk about that new restaurant down the street he wanted to try, and it was all so relationshipy that her bare skin would shiver underneath his two thousand thread count sheets. When that happened she was sure to leave before morning. She'd pack her bags while he slept, take some gas money from his wallet, and vanish without a note.

Sam knew she should probably feel bad about it, at least after the second or third time. Promises were funny things, those spoken and those felt, but he couldn't really expect her to keep them if she never learned how. Carly could disapprove and tsk all she wanted, but she didn't really understand. Sam didn't really understand it either and she wasn't self-reflective enough to care or ask Freddie.

Maybe she was trying to see if there was a leaving and returning quota and one day he would just slam the door when she showed up looking for a place to stay. Growing up she had watched her mom's exes play that pity ditty more times than she could count. And with those examples fresh in her mind, Sam ran without looking back.

Fredward Benson was a stupid idiot though and never would slam the door in her face. They would yell and scrap and he would offer the couch. She hated him more than a little for that reason and often told him so. It was code and they both understood.

**End**


	2. 2:3

Title: 2:3

Author: Alex Foster

Category: General

Word Count: 1,012

Warnings: Underage drinking.

Rating: PG for implied adult themes

Summary: Because they were never going to be a fairy tale and their happily ever after was always going to be different. Future fic.

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Dan Schneider. No money is being made and no infringement is intended.

Author's Notes: A follow up to Yo Yo Girl. Written for this week's Taming the Muse challenge. The prompt was Blood, Sweat, and Hysterics. I tried something a little different with the story structure. Hopefully it works. Thanks for reading.

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Orbital resonances greatly enhance the mutual gravitational influence of the bodies. Under some circumstances, a resonant system can be stable and self correcting, so that the bodies remain in resonance. An example is the 2:3 resonance between Pluto and Neptune.

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Freddie's memories involving Sam were never linear or exact. They remained fractured and out of order and when he submerged himself in them, he could only fall backward and wait for the new arrangement. It was fitting that when he tried to grab them and hold on, to make sense of the senseless, they slid even further away from him. Much like the girl herself, he mused. Sam's voice would always chime up from his subconscious at that thought and call him a romantic nub for thinking such fluffy thoughts.

His brain associated colors with her, too. Blues and reds mostly that swirled and kaleidoscoped around the memories like an ever shifting picture frame.

Freddie could close his eyes and still smell the freshly cut grass. The alcohol running through his system had made him feel dizzy, like he was falling backward. Beside him Sam pointed at the sky and said, "That one."

He was used to her vanishing in the night by now. The first time he was too young and too lost in it all to understand. Carly flew in from NYU and listened and comforted while he ranted. It took him a while to notice she was upset but not surprised.

The second time he and Carly started to switch roles. She was angry with Sam for abandoning him again while he had guessed all along she might leave. It was the longest Sam had stayed, up to that point, and he was figuring her out.

The moon sat low in the sky but it was still bright enough to cast a blue shade over Ridgeway's football field. Their graduation gowns bunched and twisted around their forms as they lay on their backs looking up. Stars were widely scattered but in her stupor Sam had wanted him to tell her the name of each one. The grass beneath them was freshly cut.

After the third time she left he didn't even call Carly. He made the bed, threw out the empty boxes of fat cakes, and wrote himself a note to buy more in a few weeks.

"That's not a star," he told her. "It's a planet. Jupiter."

Sam's hair was stark against his dark red graduation gown. She blinked lazily at him, not even looking at the twinkling pinpoint of light on the horizon he was explaining. Freddie knew he was rambling but couldn't stop. The warm buzz humming underneath his skin had caused words to spill uncontrollably from his mouth. Downward he fell.

Sam didn't hesitate in pushing past him when he opened the door to her the fourth time. She swept into his apartment like it was hers too, dropping her duffel on the floor and heading straight to the kitchen. She offered no explanation and that somehow made him angry even though he wasn't expecting one.

As they fought a tiny corner of his brain recognized this as the same dance they'd been doing since ninth grade. They riled each other up, pushed buttons, and didn't do conventional like everyone else. Sam was never going to be a girl like Carly and they were never going to be a fairy tale and their happily ever after was always going to be different. She'd be bored with anything else and he secretly suspected he would as well.

Deep into the early morning they argued and fought full bore, all blood sweat and hysterics, about everything except the one thing he had oddly enough come to understand. He finally sighed and told her again that he hated her; Sam smiled proudly in response.

"Are you in an abusive relationship?" Carly asked him one day. It was winter and they were the only two customers stupid enough to take their coffee to the cafe's patio. Around them Seattle was still and white with an oncoming storm. In his pocket was an old note reminding him to buy fat cakes. "It's okay, I mean. There are numbers you can call for help."

Freddie figured she was only half-serious. "No, I'm happy. I get more out of her than you might think. In fact I think I'm the lucky one."

Carly gave him her skeptical look for several long moments but finally let the matter drop and sipped her soy latte. He suspected she wasn't going to throw out the list of hotline numbers though. Just in case.

Freddie got drunk for the first time in his life on graduation night. It was late evening, or ridiculously early morning depending on the point of view, but he wasn't tired yet. Sam wasn't either and together they glanced at Carly asleep on a beanbag chair, school gown pooled like a deflated balloon around her, before sneaking away from the studio.

They found their way back to Ridgeway's freshly mowed football field. Laughing at some secret joke, Sam showed him a bottle filled with amber liquid she'd hidden underneath the bleachers. "Carly wouldn't approve," she said, thumbnail cutting the seal like a pro. "So what do you say, Fredward? Feel like being corrupted?"

In the weird quiet that always followed their welcoming fight, while Sam tore into a second package of fat cakes and Freddie stared at the colored sugar staining her lips, he offered to make up the couch for her. Because he had to allow for the chance he was wrong about her, that he had mistranslated the Puckett Code somewhere along the way. She just quirked an eyebrow.

The moon was almost fully down and the blue around them had given way to black. Freddie trailed off when Jupiter slipped below the horizon. He had tried to explain orbits and how the planets moved together, it was a beautiful system really. In his inebriation he probably hadn't gotten all the facts right, but Sam didn't care either way.

He glanced down at her, blonde hair tickling his nose as he did so. At some point during the night she had curled against him and fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder.

She hadn't heard a word he said.

**End**


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